On Claude McKay's "The Negro's
Tragedy" and Langston Hughes' "Christ in Alabama"

Josua Eckhardt

[Textual note: The Negros
tragedy was first published without this title in the July-August issue of The
Catholic Worker, where it is followed by I turn to God for greater strength to
fight and Around me roar and crash the pagan isms.]

The Negros Tragedy is an identity politics poem par
excellencecomplicated by the Christology that McKay develops throughout The
Catholic Worker sonnets. The speaker feels the Negros tragedy and
wants to heal his pain in the first quatrain. In the second, such positive
declarations give way to exclusionary ones: whites are excluded from the
Negros ken, or point of view.

Only a thorn-crowned Negro and no white
Can penetrate into the Negros ken
(The
Negros Tragedy ll. 5-6)

A second qualifier in addition to race has slipped in here: Only a thorn-crowned
Negro. This direct reference to the suffering Christ, mockingly crowned king of the
Jews by Roman soldiers, draws from a later moment of Christs ministry than does
Look Within. Indeed, Christs ministry is all but over, and his Passion
well underway, by the time he is beaten before Pilate. And it is just such a suffering
Christ whom the Negro must follow, for McKay, if he is going to
penetrate his own ken, or understand and correct his own social
position.

In the sestet, the white man is again excluded, here from writing
McKays book, which is shot out of my blood.

So what I write is shot out of my blood.
There is no white man who could write my book
Though many think the story can be told
Of what the Negro people ought to brook.
Our statesmen roam the world to set things right.
This Negro laughs, and prays to God for Light!
(The
Negros Tragedy ll. 9-14)

White men cannot do McKays writing for him. Nor can they rightly perceive the
Negros tragedy and the way it needs to be answered. One wonders just how
sweeping a critique this is: how many are the many who think they can tell the
story of the Negros tragedy? There were of course many white antiracists
on the leftand in the Catholic Worker movement; to how many of them does
McKays critique apply? The second to last line may invite a sigh of relief after
this uncertainty when it specifies the offending parties as [o]ur statesmen.
If this can be taken as a specification of all of the whites earlier in the poem, then the
target of this sonnet is no wider than that of Look Withinthe U.S.
government in its official ineffectiveness. But of course, there is no strictly linguistic
reason why the subject of line 13 should modify the parties excluded from the
Negros tragedy earlier in the poem. And there is even less
historical/political reason why it should, given McKays regular boldness in
critiquing those on the left who would be, and often were, his allies.

In the last line, the ineffective statesmen and the misunderstanding whites are laughed
off as[t]his thorn-crowned Negro prays to God
for Light! This turn to Godto take the words of the sonnet that
follows this one in The Catholic Workerparticipates in a move McKay made in a
much earlier sonnet, the 1919 To the White Fiends. After turning racist
associations of blackness and savagery against racists, "To the White Fiends"
also asserts the unmistakably black speakers direct access to God. The result is
that whether the "white fiends" subscribe to the confused notions of black
savagery in the first half of the poem, and/or the vaguely Christian framework in the
second, they are restricted from their own ideological apparatus. In the second half, the
speaker claims that the "Almighty" has created the formers soul out of
"darkness" and set him on earth to be, paradoxically, a light.

But the Almighty from the darkness drew
My soul and said: Even thou shalt be a light
Awhile to burn on the benighted earth,
Thy dusky face I set among the white
For thee to prove thyself of higher worth;
Before the world is swallowed up in night,
To show thy little lamp: go forth, go forth!
(To
the White Fiends, ll. 8-14)

But To the White Fiends is freeze-framed at creation: the originary moment
in which the Almighty creates the speaker and bespeaks his special purpose to him.
The Negros Tragedy is set later in such a speakers life:
corresponding to the late point in Christs Passion when the speaker shares
Christs crown of thorns but, knowingly and triumphantly, laughs and prays to God for
light (cf. the dark Passion in the 1921 The White City, l. 6).

The combination of this crown of thorns and confidence in prayer does not only develop
McKays earlier religious imagery; it heightens the distinction between his religious
imagery and Langston Hughes. One could say that Hughes Christ in
Alabama wears the same crown of thorns that McKays 1945 Christ-figure does,
since the beaten and black moment of Christs life was endured with a
crown of thorns. In other words, like The Negros Tragedy, Christ
in Alabama refers to a crucified Christ.

Both Hughes and McKays American Christ-figures are unmistakably black. The
provocative implication Hughes makes by re-setting the holy family in the American south
of the Scottsboro trial is that in Alabama only a Nigger can play
Christs role, because only s/he participates in such suffering. In part, this is
precisely what McKay says in this later sonnet: Only a thorn-crowned Negro and no
white / Can penetrate into the Negros ken. But Hughes rendition of the
black Christ is more exclusionary because it implies that only a nigger can
follow Christ, at least in Alabama. McKays version says nothing about
the ability of others to follow Christ, but he makes clear that, in order to
penetrate the Negros ken, [o]nly a thorn-crowned Negro will
do.

A more substantive difference between McKays and Hughes Christ-figures is
forced by the third stanza of Christ in Alabama. After successfully
appropriating the Christian imagery that too often was used to justify racism, Hughes goes
on to identify Mary with the Mammy of the South and God the father with
a White Master. In re-casting the holy family as the illegitimate
family of the slave plantation, Hughes goes too far to unproblematically maintain his
appropriation of Christianity. This is because in the first two stanzas, racists are
confined to the italicized third lines, responsible for persecuting Christ and Mary and so
cut off from them. In the third stanza though, the role of God the father is reserved for
the White Master:

If the first stanza of the poem effectively steals Christianity away from racists, this
third stanza would seem to give it right back, insisting that at least in
Alabama mastery is synonymous with whiteness and that, as one of the masters
tools, Christianity always already serves the White Master. Colored in
this way, the holy family does far more political harm than good. If both Christ is
a Nigger in Alabama and God his father is a White Master,
then not even Gods son can access him without reinscribing the illegitimate family
structure of the slave plantation.

McKays thorn-crowned Negro prays to God for Light, on the
other hand, without being troubled by Hughes pitfalls. This is as true of
McKays early poems, such as To the White Fiends and The
Lynching, as it is of the later ones. McKay never concedes Christianity or any other
religion to racists, neither by coloring God nor by any other means. The difference
between McKays early and late religious sentiments can be seen more clearly
vis-à-vis Christ in Alabama. McKays early religious sonnets never
achieve the specific shame and suffering of Christ, as Hughes so perfectly does in
Christ in Alabama. In The Negros Tragedy, McKay approaches
the force of Christ in Alabama much more closely: here McKays
Negro is identified with the suffering, thorn-crowned Christ. The
difference is that McKays Christ-figure can still laughingly pray to God. If
Hughes Christ were to try to do that in Alabama, he would find himself quite
forsaken, and probably starting the horrible poem over again with the white master
cursing, O, bare your back!